Legacy (Keeper of the Lost Cities #8) - Shannon Messenger Page 0,108

there’s still no sign of her family returning?” he asked Sandor, who’d marched over to one of the windows to check through the curtains.

“Flori has signaled that we’re clear—for the moment,” Sandor informed him, stomping back to his post in the doorway. “But the sooner we leave, the better.”

“Agreed,” Mr. Forkle said.

“We’re not going anywhere until Amy wakes up and we make sure she’s okay and answer her questions,” Sophie reminded them.

“That’s the plan,” Mr. Forkle corrected, “but we’ll have to adjust if her parents return—which is why I tried to start this process as soon as we got here.”

“Excuse me for trying to save my sister from this.” She pointed to Amy, whose eyes were squeezed so tight, they looked like angry lines.

Sophie reached out, brushing back strands of Amy’s sweat-soaked hair off of her forehead and tucking them behind her ears—stalling as she worked up the courage to ask, “How badly did I hurt her that day? My memory… wasn’t exactly clear.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Mr. Forkle said quietly. “All the more reason you can’t blame yourself for what happened. You had no idea what was going on.”

“I didn’t,” Sophie agreed, stopping herself from mentioning all the things she did know, now that she had the advantage of hindsight to translate what had happened between her and him.

She had lots of questions.

Maybe even a few accusations.

But she wasn’t going to let him sidetrack her.

“You didn’t answer my question. How badly did I hurt her that day?”

Mr. Forkle checked Amy’s thoughts again before he answered. “Inflicting is all in the mind, so she suffered zero physical trauma. Why do you think I didn’t bother bringing Elwin or Livvy with us today?”

Sophie had a feeling that Elwin and Livvy would strongly disagree with that decision—and Sophie wasn’t sold on it either, given the greenish pallor lingering on her sister’s skin.

But once again, Mr. Forkle was changing the subject.

“We both know the pain is just as real as an actual injury,” Sophie insisted. “Probably worse.”

Mr. Forkle sighed. “It can be, yes. And I won’t lie, what your sister experienced that day—and again now, to a smaller extent—was… let’s just call it indescribable, and leave it at that, okay?”

Sophie brushed back another strand of her sister’s sticky hair.

Didn’t she owe it to her to learn every detail about what Amy had endured?

“Sometimes knowledge is simply knowledge,” Mr. Forkle said, guessing what she’d been wondering. “My brother and I shared every single memory throughout our entire lives—except one. He held back the details of the pain he experienced from his final injury, and I’m sure he did that because he knew I would’ve relived it over and over, trying to make amends for the fact that I get to carry on and he doesn’t. So he eliminated that as a possibility for me. And from what I know of your sister, I’ve no doubt that she’d want the same for you—just as you would for her if the situation were reversed.”

“Maybe,” Sophie admitted, blinking hard to keep any tears from forming. “It’s just… I can still hear her screams.”

“And I’m sure you always will,” he said quietly. “But… I think we should also acknowledge the fact that you just mentioned them without needing Flori to sing your echoes to sleep. That’s a tremendous victory, Miss Foster. One that’s not worth jeopardizing—especially for knowledge that will do no actual good.”

Sophie sighed. “I guess—unless Amy needs to talk about what happened. If she does, I’ll let her share every awful detail.”

She didn’t care if it brought the shadow monster back in full force—she’d do whatever Amy needed to help her recover from this nightmare.

“Fair enough,” Mr. Forkle told her. “Though, I think you’re also overlooking a very important aspect of what happened. Your sister’s screams came from more than just pain. She was also witnessing something her brain couldn’t begin to comprehend—and she was terrified that the red light was killing you.”

Sophie frowned. “Red light?”

He nodded. “Your inflicting operated very differently that day. It worked the way we designed it to—or mostly, anyway—and the emotions were channeled out of your mind in a single, targeted red beam that flashed and struck like a bolt of lightning.”

Sophie tried to picture it, but the only thing she could come up with was some cross between an alien mind trick and an exorcism—and she really didn’t want to imagine herself that way.

And once again, her head flooded with questions about what had actually happened between Mr. Forkle and her